OK, that is the interpretation I found less convincing. The bare axiomatic normative claim that all the desires and moral intuitions not concerned with pleasure as such are errors with respect to maximization of pleasure isn't an argument for adopting that standard.

The argument for adopting that standard was based on epistemological prevalence of the goodness and badness of good and bad feelings, while other hypothetical intrinsic values could be so only by much less certain inference. But I'd also argue that the nature of how the world is perceived necessitates conscious subjects, and reason that, in the lack of them, or in an universe eternally without consciousness, nothing could possibly matter ethically. Consciousness is therefore given special status, and good and bad relate to it.

And given the admission that biological creatures can and do want things other than pleasure, have other moral intuitions and motivations, and the knowledge that we can and do make computer programs with preferences defined over some model of their environment that do not route through an equivalent of pleasure and pain, the connection from moral philosophy to empirical prediction is on shakier ground than the purely normative assertions.

Biological creatures indeed have other preferences, but I classify those in the error category, as Eliezer justifies in CEV. Their validity could be argued on a case by case basis, though. Machines could be made unconscious or without capacity for good and bad feelings, then they would need to infer the existence of these by seeing living organisms and their culture (in this case, their certainty would be similar to that of their world model), or possibly by being very intelligent and deducing it from scratch (if this be even possible), otherwise they might be morally anti-realist. In the lack of real values, I suppose, they would have no logical reason to act one way or another, considering meta-ethics.

Once one is valuing things in a model of the world, why stop at your particular axiom? And people do have reactions of approval to their mental models of an equal society, or a diversity of goods, or perfectionism, which are directly experienced.

You can say that you might pursue something vaguely like X, which people feel is morally good or obligatory as such, is instrumental in pursuit of Y. But that doesn't change the pursuit of X, even in conflict with Y.

I think that these values need to be justified somehow. I see them as instrumental values for their tendency to lead to the direct values of good feelings, which take a special status by being directly verified as good. Decision theory and practical ethics are very complex, and sometimes one would take an instrumentally valuable action even in detriment of a direct value, if the action be expected to give even more direct value in the future. For instance, one might spend a lot of time learning philosophical topics, even if it be in detriment of direct pleasure, if one sees it as likely to be important to the world, causing good feelings or preventing bad feelings in an unclear but potentially significant way.